I am going to take legal action against the entire world. For YEARS, I disliked tons of books. My resting state was neutrality, at best. When I four-starred a book, people cheered in the streets and small nations declared the day a bank holiday.And people would always say, "emma, you need to figure out what books you like and stick with it."And I did it. I stopped reading YA contemporaries (kinda), sci fi (with the kind of relief small children experience on the last day of school), and historic...

This is one of the most satisfying, atmospheric and profoundly moving rereads for me, Kazuo Ishiguro's 1989 Booker Prize winner, a perceptive, inspired character study of a retiring butler, Stevens, and through him, the insightful penetration of a turbulent period of British history, detailing a bygone era, its class structures, a changing country losing its empire and way of life. Stevens embodies a rigidity and formality that seems all too absurd in our modern times, obsessive about and puttin...

Every day, for the past week I've encouraged myself to start writing this review. It felt impossible to find my words to discuss such a literary masterpiece. Who gives me the right to even try? After staring blankly at the screen for some time, I finally remembered a beautiful passage that can perfectly describe what I felt about this novel. So, I will let the author describe his work. Although the quote depicts the magnificent English countryside It can be applied to the novel as well. “What is...

this book is full of butlers

"When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery." -Maxim Gorky.I bought this novel in tandem with Never Let Me Go, a book so tedious that I abandoned it, preferring instead to watch paint dry.Nevertheless, I was prepared to give Ishiguro the benefit of the doubt, wipe the slate clean and start afresh.The story is told from the POV of Mr Stevens, English butler to Mr Farraday, his nouveau riche American master: I invite you to imagine Stevens to be an amalgam of W...

So Ishiguro has won the noble prize for literature 2017. This quote from the yeasterday's guardian article says it all to me:The British author Kazuo Ishiguro said he was both honoured and “taken completely by surprise” after he was named this year’s winner of the 2017 Nobel prize in literature, even initially wondering if the announcement was a case of “fake news”.[...]“Part of me feels like an imposter and part of me feels bad that I’ve got this before other living writers,” said Ishiguro. “Ha...

Ever in my Top 3. Overwhelmingly Profound.Think...Regret came shivering through my veins,And bound my tongue in iron chains;My soul in prison seem'd to be,And ever must if torn from thee."The Recall to Affection," Susanna BlamireOh, yesterday came suddenly."Yesterday," Lennon-McCartney, 1965It is nearly impossible to describe The Remains of the Day without invoking what I believe may be the most heartbreaking scene in all of literature.Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel is a masterclass in restraint and emo...

“The evening's the best part of the day. You've done your day's work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.” I suppose what one really needs at the end of it all, in the twilight of life, is to know that it was worth something, that there was some meaning, some purpose to it. Because if it was all in vain, why even try?With The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro created a masterpiece, mesmerizing, evocative, subtle, elegant and perfectly crafted, with precise mastery of language, setting ...

Kazuo Ishiguro writes the anti-haiku: instead of consciousness awakening to the immediacy of the immutable natural world, subjective memory is peeled back layer by layer to expose consciousness; instead of the joyous eruption of awareness, the tension of the gradual decompression of ignorance; instead of a humility that acknowledges the unknowable on its own terms, rambling that tries to fill the chasm of existential angst that has suddenly opened up like a sinkhole in being. Yet what his writin...

It's not what happens in this story that's important, it's what doesn't happen. It's not what is said, but what is not said.I almost feel like Stevens in a real person and not a fictional character. He may well be the most tragic figure I've had the honor to meet/read. He tried so hard to do what he thought to be the right thing and in the end it all turned out to the wrong thing...I cried for at least a half hour after I finished the final page. It was a bittersweet moment when he admitted to h...